to liberality, of which her colonial system is in other respects deserving.  The conduct of her government has undoubtedly been in most instances liberal and enlightened; and if they have occasionally deviated from their ordinary enlarged policy of establishing the representative system, and leaving to the colonies, themselves, the liberty of framing laws adapted to their several circumstances and wants, it has been principally in those cases where the ancient inveterate habits of the people, their difference of religion, and inferior civilization, have rendered such deviations unavoidable.  India furnishes the principal example of such exception to her general policy; yet, even in her remote possessions in that country, the sixty millions who are subject to her sway, enjoy a security of person and property unknown to them while under the government of their native princes.  It is on this amelioration in their condition, and not on the strength and number of her armies, that her dominion in that part of the world is founded; and after all, what government is so stable as that which is bottomed on opinion, and depends for its existence on general utility, and the consent of the governed?  Dominion may, indeed, be acquired, and continued by force and terror; but if it have no other props to support it, it is at best but precarious, and must, sooner or later, fall, either by the resistance of those whom it would hold in subjection, or by undermining their moral and physical energies, and thus rendering them unfit even for the vile purposes of despotism itself.

The colony of New South Wales, is, I believe, the only one of our possessions exclusively inhabited by Englishmen, in which there is not at least the shadow of a free government, as it possesses neither a council, a house of assembly, nor even the privilege of trial by jury.  And although it must be confessed that the strange ingredients of which this colony was formed, did not, at the epoch of its foundation, warrant a participation of these important privileges, it will be my endeavour in this essay to prove that the withholding of them up to the present period, has been the sole cause why it has not realized the expectations which its founders were led to form of its capabilities.

It is not difficult to conceive that the same causes, which in the lapse of centuries have sufficed to undermine and eventually ingulph vast empires, should be able to impede the progress of smaller communities, whether they be kingdoms, states, or colonies.  Arbitrary governments, indeed, are so generally admitted to impair the moral and physical energies of a people, that it would be superfluous to enter into an elaborate disquisition, in order to demonstrate the truth of a position, which has been confirmed by the experience of ages.  Whoever is convinced that he has no rights, no possessions that are sacred and inviolable, is a slave, and devoid of that noble feeling of independence which is essential to the dignity of his nature, and